Examination of Witnesses (Questions 208-249)
Katharine Birbalsingh, Daisy Christodoulou, Sue Cowley,
Paul Dix, Tom Trust
17 November 2010
Q208 Chair: Good morning. Thank
you very much for joining us this morning for this behaviour and
discipline inquiry. It is a great pleasure to have you with us.
We tend to do this fairly informally and use first names, if
you are all comfortable with that. You have come to give evidence
to us this morning. If you had to pick one thing that could be
adopted and help to improve behaviour and discipline in our schools,
what would it be? Can I start with you, Tom? And don't cheat.
Tom Trust: One thing is a return
to the belief that, where respect comes into the equation, the
children should actually be respecting their teachers rather than
the other way round, depending on the definition of "respect"
that you are using.
Q209 Chair: Isn't respect necessarily
mutual?
Tom Trust: Yes, but it has a number
of different definitions. What a lot of children who are less
well behaved appear to mean by the word is that you—the
teacher—should defer to them. That is one meaning of "respect".
One of the things that I have found as a teacher over the years
is that it is usually the children who have done the least to
earn respect who expect you to defer to them.
Q210 Chair: So it is a re-establishment
of adult authority.
Tom Trust: Yes, if you want to
précis it, that would be the summation.
Daisy Christodoulou: I would arrange
school timetables so that pupils are taught by as few teachers
as possible over a week, and that teachers teach as few pupils
as possible, whereas currently a teacher may teach 20 lessons
a week and may teach 20 different classes. Teachers therefore
have to see hundreds of pupils and know all their stories, all
their targets and everything about them. If it can be done so
that they teach only four or five classes a week, it would allow
teachers and pupils to form better bonds and better relationships
and reduce the likelihood of pupils misbehaving.
Paul Dix: I would introduce to
teacher training throughout, whichever route you take to become
a teacher, compulsory high-standard, high quality training and
behaviour management. We must be honest about the skills that
we can teach and ask teachers to teach behaviour rather than just
to rely on our culture moving towards better behaviour. We must
actually teach the skills, but do it so that it is consistent
throughout the country and do it when it has most impact, which
is in initial teacher training. We must make that training of
the highest quality that it can be and teach behaviour on a par
with how teachers learn to teach the curriculum.
Q211 Chair:
Do you think that the training of teachers in behaviour management
is poor?
Paul Dix: It is shockingly patchy.
When it is poor, it is half an hour in a seminar and sink or
swim. We have proved that we can teach it, and when we do teach
it, it turns schools around. We have been doing it for 10 years.
Let us have it as a core competence. Let us give teachers the
ability to learn it in training, so that they do not come to us
and say, "Thank God we met you 30 years later. If only somebody
had told me that 30 years ago."
Sue Cowley: I am going with Paul
on this. I meet NQTs all the time. I work with them, and they
say to me, "Why didn't anybody tell us that there are these
really simple, straightforward things that are not easy to put
in place, but that are straightforward to communicate to NQTs?
Why has nobody told us practical ways of actually managing behaviour?"
A lot more complex things could be changed, but of all the things
that could be changed in a fairly straightforward way, it would
be to give new teachers access to those techniques and strategies
that make a direct difference in classrooms.
Q212 Chair: Behaviour and discipline
is not some new faddish concern. It has gone on for years. How
can we have a system of initial teacher training, continuing professional
development and the most researched educational system in the
whole world and not have put in place basic, well-recognised techniques?
Sue Cowley: Yet all the time I
meet new teachers who say to me, "Nobody ever told me this,"
and it is such a straightforward thing.
Katharine Birbalsingh: While I
agree with my colleagues, we have got things the wrong way round.
We are always concentrating on looking at the behaviour and then
dealing with the behaviour. All that is very good and, clearly,
there are a lot of ways of dealing with behaviour from the teacher's
point of view. That is an excellent idea and we need to teach
the teachers that, but what we need to do is to hold staff to
account. In particular, we need to hold the senior teams to account.
When I say, "hold them to account", senior teams are
responsible for leading schools and for supporting their teachers.
Too often, senior teams fail their teachers by not supporting
them properly and by having low expectations. We need to ensure
that the right questions are asked of senior teams. Are they
putting systems in place to ensure that the right kind of environment
exists in the schools, so that the behaviour we are talking about
does not happen and the level of bad behaviour is reduced? Clearly,
teachers still need to know how to deal with that behaviour, but
if senior teams were doing their job properly across the country,
we would not have the state of behaviour that we have at the moment.
Q213 Chair: What happens to people
on the front line who try to highlight the situation and ask for
greater levels of support?
Katharine Birbalsingh: Obviously,
it depends on the school. It is not that people don't want to
help. There is too much in-house variation to which some people
here have referred. If you are an excellent teacher and can manage
that behaviour, you will survive wherever you are and do well.
Then what tends to happen is that senior teams say, "If he
can do it, why can't she?" But it is the role of leaders
in schools to ensure that all teachers can discipline their students.
That doesn't mean taking responsibility away from the member of
staff, but there is a real lack of responsibility in our schools.
The children and teachers are not responsible for themselves,
and it's the same with senior teams. Often in schools, you see
the senior teams blame the teachers and say, "If only they
had the skills and were as clever as I am, everything would be
fine." And the teachers say, "The senior team are horrible.
They won't support me and won't do anything." There is a
kind of back-biting that goes on, and the people who are lost,
obviously, are the children in between.
Q214 Chair: Do the rest of you
accept Katharine's analysis? We have heard evidence that leadership
teams in schools tend to be slightly removed from the reality
of front-line teachers who have to put up with behaviour, and
sometimes that doesn't seem to filter upwards. It is certainly
not recognised, and teachers facing challenge are not supported
in the way that they should be.
Daisy Christodoulou: I agree with
most of that.
Paul Dix: It comes back to the
same issue—the fact that they all start from different starting
points. If you don't allow people access to high quality training,
you will have teachers who are failing and struggling, and teachers
who are absolutely flying. There is also variation in senior
management teams. Some are on the ground every day, deeply committed
to being out of their offices and involved in the life of the
school. Some shut their doors and lock themselves away. Again—I'm
sure we'll come to it—the patchy nature of effective leadership
is a core issue.
Q215 Chair: You have said that
behaviour management techniques for front-line teachers can be
taught. Is there something just as discrete and deliverable that
can be given to school leaders? Obviously, Katharine's point is
different from yours. Regardless of the skill of the teacher,
the really highly skilled ones might be able to cope more easily
but they also need support and help when required. Can that be
delivered?
Paul Dix: Yes. We do exactly that.
We work with future leaders, head teachers and middle management
teams to create the conditions where the training will have most
effect. That is what we do. It's proven. HMI and Ofsted have seen
it and commended it.
Tom Trust: What Katharine said
is crucial. Without identifying any locations, I have worked in
a school where the head's attitude towards a teacher having a
problem with a disruptive pupil was to say, "It's your problem.
Your lessons must be uninteresting," or "Your methods
are not good enough." Then you can have a situation where
a head or senior team give support, which has a number of benefits.
It certainly lifts staff morale. I sat on a case recently where
a head had gone into a school to turn it around. He put 13 members
of staff on capability in one go. That must have had a devastating
effect on staff room morale, which of course will then feed down
to their performance in the classroom. It will do nothing to improve
the school. On the other hand, in another school I am aware of—I
won't identify it—a head has just come in and has started
from the point of view of the pupils. He has shown the staff that
he is supporting them in a school where they had felt unsupported,
where there were all the various problems. They were getting stressed
out. They had absences and so forth. He has come into the school
and started dealing with pupils. He said to the staff, "If
you have any problems, I will deal with them." He has confronted
the problem in that direction and lifted the morale of the staff.
I am aware of it because I know many of them. So, I am underlining
what Katharine has said. The role of senior teams in this matter
is absolutely crucial, but very patchy.
Q216 Nic Dakin: Good morning.
Thank you all for coming. I have to leave before the end of the
session because of constituency matters, so I apologise for that.
Can I take this a little further? How do we ensure that school
leaders in the increasingly devolved situation that we are moving
into meet the highest aspirations that you are describing in terms
of leading on behaviour? How do we do that?
Tom Trust: I think that that will
be very difficult. You referred to the devolved powers, and I
think that that will make any kind of consistent approach very
difficult. It is what this Government seem to want to do. What
the solution is, I do not know.
Sue Cowley: When I talk to teachers—mainly
on the ground with them, as opposed to with managers—the
thing that most worries them is when there is a kind of disjoint
between what happens in the classroom and the support that is
provided by the management. Teachers will say to me, "I follow
the school policy and I discipline—I give a verbal warning,
a written warning, and then I go to the next stage up and the
next stage up. But nothing happens when that goes up the line."
So it is a case of joining up the teacher in the classroom—on
the ground, with the kids—and finding a way for management
to follow through at the top end of the disciplinary policy. Otherwise,
the children quickly learn that when the teacher says, "This
will happen," it does not, which is a big problem in schools.
Katharine Birbalsingh: We have
to hold them to account. We need to ask questions—we need
to ask the same questions of staff that we do of senior teams.
We say to them, "What kind of bad behaviour do you put up
with? What do you think is acceptable?" You ask the head
and the deputies, and then you ask the same of staff, to see if
they match up—if they do not, you need to ask a few more
questions. You need to ask them about what kinds of systems they
have in place in the school to support the teachers, and if they
work. Ask the senior team and then ask the staff to see whether
they match up and then, finally, hold them to account. Quite simply
if people do not do their jobs, they need to be fired. If people
cannot do their jobs there needs to be some sense that they might
lose them. Members of the senior team do not feel that, so they
go about their jobs doing whatever it is that they do. In the
same way that we need to hold teachers and children to account,
we need to hold senior teams to account. We should not allow these
things to spin out of control for years and years. If a school
is in chaos, the senior team is doing something wrong and we need
to point our finger at them and say, "This isn't good enough,"
and hold them to account. We should not feel fear about doing
that. In any other industry, if you do not do your job properly,
you lose it. Why can we not have that in teaching? I want to be
able to work in a profession that is held in such high regard
that when I do well, someone says, "Well done," and
when I do not do well, I think, "Oh my goodness—I'm
in fear for my job." That is how it should be—like
it is in industry.
Q217 Nic Dakin: There seems to
be a difference between your approach and Tom's.
Tom Trust: I agree that senior
teams should be accountable. I am very supportive of the notion
of 360° appraisal. Managers and heads are not appraised by
the people whom they most affect—the staff. I do not want
to leave out the fact that how they affect the staff also affects
the children, which is why the whole thing is there in the first
place. I have sat on cases for the General Teaching Council, which
I have resigned from, by the way—I am not in it any more.
There have been a couple of times when I have sat on a case and
I have heard a head teacher giving evidence against a teacher,
and I have sat there thinking, "You should be in the dock
as well—so to speak—because what you were doing was
clearly not helping the situation."
Paul Dix: Hold people accountable,
but train them effectively first—give them an opportunity
to learn the skills. Many of our middle and senior managers went
through a period when we had corporal punishment. We put down
the cane and we replaced it with nothing, and we force teachers
to guess. Well, if you were previously striking your students
and suddenly you are told not to, what do you do? You shout, you
rail, and you try to replace the physical punishment with some
sort of emotional punishment. Nobody trained our teachers, so,
absolutely, hold senior and middle management to account—but
train them so that they can do it. None of this is particularly
revolutionary or new, it just needs to be done. It has never been
done apart from where we go—where we go and do it, we see
schools in the worst possible situations turn around, because
people get it. If you train them and then they do not get it,
and they are clearly not taking up the opportunity, you can tackle
them. The national strategy has trained teachers in need, but
it did not train all teachers; it trained some managers and some
middle managers, but it did not give that consistency across the
country. What is the motor of a good school? It is the middle
management, and where they are not trained appropriately, you
see things fall down. You can train the staff as well as you want,
but if you have not trained the middle and senior management,
the whole thing is a waste of money.
Daisy Christodoulou: This ties
into devolved powers to schools. Sue said about how you punish
a kid, you go up the behaviour policy and get to the top of it—then
what happens? The ultimate sanction is permanent exclusion, which
is something that would be affected by devolved powers, as PRUs
are commissioned on a local authority basis. I have a great deal
of sympathy for people who have to operate in this area. When
I was at the classroom level, I did not see such things happen.
I can sense a lot of pressure for and there are probably a lot
of people who want to exclude pupils. Nevertheless, from my position
in the classroom, it seemed that there were a lot of pupils who
could do unacceptable things repeatedly, and they had to do an
awful lot that was really bad in order to be permanently excluded.
I understand that it is difficult and that the PRUs have a lot
of pressure on them. However, you may have the best behaviour
policy in the world—the best trained teachers in the world—but
kids know that they can get to the top level of sanction and,
as it sometimes seems, effectively just start again at the beginning.
They work their way up to the top, and begin again. If there is
no ultimate sanction at the top, it is very hard—for all
the skills and all the techniques—to enforce any of this.
Kids quickly see through it.
Q218 Nic Dakin: May I move on
to a different picture? We have taken a lot of evidence and also
visited several institutions, so we have looked at what is going
on. To me, the general picture is that behaviour in schools is
generally good to very good. But there are some pockets of difficult
behaviour, with a few students in particular schools, and probably
across them. Does that match your assessment of what is going
on?
Sue Cowley: There are two things
going on, when I talk to teachers. First, there is the low-level
stuff, which a competent, inspirational teacher can deal with
fairly simply. Secondly, there is a core group of students with
what I consider to be fairly serious behavioural issues, who,
since inclusion, are perhaps in a mainstream environment that
does not suit their needs. One, two, three or x number—it's
the weight of numbers—of those kind of students can destroy
the learning for 30 kids in a class. That breaks teachers' hearts.
They say, "I just want to teach. There are 27 in there who
all want to learn. And I have these three hardcore students."
It is the hardcore ones who can destroy the education of the other
children, which is really just a crime.
Q219 Nic Dakin: But you are saying
that that is an exception rather than a rule.
Sue Cowley: It only happens in
certain schools. In most schools, it is the low-level stuff, and
if you have one, two or three difficult students, you can support
them and put them into the referral unit. But where there is a
weight of numbers in a school, it moves to the negative side—the
ethos of the school is affected and there is a snowball effect.
Daisy Christodoulou: I agree completely
about the two levels—low-level disruption and serious misbehaviour—but
they are linked. Even if only a few pupils do really quite bad
things, if they are seen to be getting away with those things,
it makes it so much harder to tell a kid at the back of the class
to stop drinking a Coke or to do their tie up properly, so the
two are linked. It may be a minority of pupils who behave in that
way, but if you don't deal with it effectively—in a lot
of cases, we don't—it impacts on everyone and lowers standards
across the school.
Katharine Birbalsingh: I want
to say that what Daisy has said about holding pupils to account,
and their having some final sanction happening to them, is a big
issue. What Sue has said obviously follows on from that. I also
want to point out on the difference between good and very good
that it depends what you mean by good and very good.
Q220 Nic Dakin: I am looking at
Sir Alan Steer's inquiry into behaviour and at Ofsted inspection
reports. That is the evidence base that we have been given.
Katharine Birbalsingh: I would
say that when Ofsted says something is good, it's not very good.
Certainly, from the thousands of teachers I have spoken to, the
many teachers who have now written to me—given my new profile—and
others who have spoken to me in the street, I would say that bad
behaviour in the country is quite common. That does not mean that
all children are badly behaved. You have a situation where 27
of them are fine, but three of them are being disruptive in most
classes across the country. Because you do not have the final
possible outcome—the child knows that they go up, come back
down again and go up, and that there is nothing that can be ultimately
done about them—you often have two or three students in
each class who are misbehaving in such a way. Bad behaviour spreads
like a cancer; it is very difficult to contain it. One very badly
behaved student impacts on a second one, who is quite badly behaved,
and those two impact on two others, who are somewhat badly behaved.
It spreads, so that even the very good students become somewhat
unsettled. That creates a situation where you have low-level behaviour.
People often dismiss that, and say, "It's just low-level
behaviour, that's okay." You'd be amazed, however, at how
disruptive to learning low-level behaviour is.
Q221 Nic Dakin: I think that people
understand that. The reality is that we have a base of evidence,
through Ofsted inspections and through Sir Alan Steer, which says
that behaviour is good to very good. You are saying that your
anecdotal evidence base challenges that. You're saying that in
every classroom there are three disruptive students, whereas Ofsted
is saying that it has not seen that.
Katharine Birbalsingh: No. I'm
saying that it is in lots of classrooms.
Tom Trust: I must question Mr
Dakin's sources—the Steer report and Ofsted. I have read
the Steer report, and I think that he talked to a lot of head
teachers. Head teachers have told me that there are no discipline
problems in their school when there have been copies of lesson
observations that they have taken when they have been observing
the teacher. In those observations, there have been a list of
misdemeanours happening with the head in the room. I have also
heard a head say, on oath, that there were no disciplinary problems,
even though there were press reports stating that there were.
Getting evidence from head teachers is not always reliable, because
they have a lot to lose. On Ofsted, I did some supply in a school
that was having an Ofsted report, and I got my supply list for
the lessons that I was covering that day. I was told that those
teachers were not away, but that I was going in the classroom
with them. In I went. I later found out that it was unlikely that
Ofsted inspectors will go into a class that is being covered by
a supply teacher—it is not impossible, but it is unlikely.
Each morning, the Ofsted inspectors were given the little pile
of cover slips, and they knew which lessons were being covered.
They thought that the ones that I was supposed to be covering
were covered, but they weren't. They were terrible classes. They
did not necessarily have weak teachers—perhaps some were—but
they were full of really disruptive pupils. Ofsted's views on
behaviour are not worth the paper they are written on, in my humble
opinion, because there are lots of strategies that head teachers
use to avoid the Ofsted inspectors seeing the worst children.
That may shock you, and you may think that that is an isolated
incident, but it is not—it happens. I have one crucial point
to make. I was elected to the GTC by secondary teachers. I objected
to the GTC's stance at the time on not supporting teachers on
the question of unruly pupils. That was my election statement
and secondary teachers had to vote for 11 out of 24 candidates.
I got the fifth highest number of first choice votes. Okay, there
was only 7% turnout, but 7% of 250,000 teachers is a very good
sample compared with a YouGov poll or a Mori poll. I thought,
"Hang on," because I hadn't expected to be elected;
I was just making a statement.
Q222 Chair: I take it that that
is a statistical indication of genuine concern among secondary
teachers.
Tom Trust: Yes. It is there among
secondary school teachers.
Q223 Chair: I want to bring Lisa
in, because we have got a lot to cover, but does anyone else want
to add anything on that? Both Katharine and Tom have said that
they do not think that Ofsted and Steer give an accurate reflection
of the level of indiscipline in our schools.
Paul Dix: We can all throw anecdotes
in front of you to prove the story either way. What is clear is
that behaviour is good or outstanding in most of our schools.
If you asked teachers whether they would appreciate more input
on behaviour, they would say, "Absolutely, yes." We
should give them that, and we should focus resources on those
schools and pupils that are most in need.
Q224 Chair: So, you broadly accept
the Ofsted analysis, although there is obviously still ample room
for improvement.
Paul Dix: Yes.
Q225 Chair: Sue, do you accept
the Ofsted analysis?
Sue Cowley: Generally speaking,
behaviour is good and fine. We mustn't demonise children. They
are just being like we were. A lot of this stuff is what we did
when we were at school: "Let's wind up the teacher."
I think you have to be really careful. This is the current generation
of children. They are different from how we were when we were
at school, but they are essentially children. But there are some
schools in crisis; don't get me wrong.
Daisy Christodoulou: Briefly,
I have concerns. I don't have any statistical data to back it
up, but some Ofsted reports and the Steer report don't ring true
with what I see. I think a lot comes down to what Katharine has
said about what you define as good behaviour. If you say bad behaviour
is only something that is at the extremes of violence, then yes,
it is a minority. But if you define it more broadly, which I think
it is fair to do, then I think that there are problems. I think
it is a significant issue among the teachers I trained with, who
represent a fairly big cross section.
Paul Dix: But you're in the most
challenging schools, though, so your experience is skewed by that.
Daisy Christodoulou: That is true,
but it is still a lot of schools.
Paul Dix: But they're all identified
as challenging schools, which is why Teach First is involved.
Daisy Christodoulou: But in challenging
circumstances, some of them are classified as outstanding.
Chair: I am going to bring this dialogue
to a close, as fascinating and enjoyable as it is.
Q226 Lisa Nandy: I've heard from
most of the panel that you have real concerns about Ofsted's ability
to give us an accurate picture of the level and nature of challenging
behaviour in schools. What suggestions do you have for how we
might get a really accurate picture?
Sue Cowley: You want to do what
it is doing in early years, which is Ofsted turns up without warning.
If you want an accurate picture, and do not want schools to exclude
pupils for the week,[1]
you want to get it down to, "Right, somebody turns up."[2]
But equally, what you don't want to do is have this punitive model.
At the moment, there is this sense that Ofsted is just here to
pass judgment—there is no sense that there's the kind of
support that there used to be with the kind of LEA inspection
model. I think that has kind of gone missing down the years somewhere.
Q227 Lisa Nandy: Do the rest of
you agree with that—if Ofsted were seen to be more of a
way of helping schools to improve and reach standards rather than
just an inspection model?
Sue Cowley: If you want schools
to be honest and give an honest picture of what goes on day to
day, then you can't expect all lessons to be outstanding. Some
days, teachers are knackered, and they need to have a lesson that
just kind of paces along. Some days, they are an inspiration,
absolutely, but on a Friday, when it's the last thing, it has
been raining all day, and the kids are narky, you adapt, and you're
flexible. Not every day is every single teacher in the country
going to be able to prove that they're outstanding.
Q228 Lisa Nandy: The other members
of the panel said largely that Ofsted underestimates the level
of challenging behaviour in schools; I know you didn't, Paul.
The Children's Commissioner put to us the opposite point of view,
which is that because Ofsted focuses very much on lower-performing
schools, the picture we get of poor behaviour is over-inflated.
Do any of you have any response to that?
Katharine Birbalsingh: For the
vast majority of my career, I have only ever worked in good and
outstanding schools. Ofsted's standards are not high enough when
it comes to behaviour—it is as simple as that. The problem
is that we've got it the wrong way round, as I said at the beginning.
We keep thinking, "Well, there's bad behaviour. What do we
do about it?" Of course we need to think like that, but what
we are not thinking about is: how do we create an environment
where that behaviour doesn't happen in the first place? That is
what we must concentrate on. Ofsted doesn't even look at that.
It is not thinking about what kinds of systems are in place to
ensure that a certain environment is created. We always come to
it after the fact, and don't pre-empt. We're not trying to create
a certain environment. What we're doing is we wait for the behaviour
to happen, and then we're thinking about how we react to it. Of
course we need to react to it and have innovative ways of dealing
with behaviour, but it is not even necessarily in the thinking
of senior teams that those environments need to be created. It
is not in the thinking of inspectors. It's just not in anyone's
thinking, frankly, and that's what we need to do.
Q229 Lisa Nandy: The Government's
direction of travel is very much about trying to free up good
or outstanding schools from inspection. Do you think that that's
a positive thing in relation to behaviour, or do you think that
that might cause some problems?
Tom Trust: If they aren't going
to look at the outstanding schools, what yardstick are they going
to use to measure others by?
Q230 Bill Esterson: Can I ask
the panel to define what they regard as unacceptable behaviour,
and what they define as children being children, and where the
line between the two is?
Paul Dix: That is a fascinating
question. I was at a school the other day where somebody had been
excluded for what in another school would be a terribly minor
offence, but they suddenly found themselves permanently excluded.
They go to the pupil referral unit, which asks, "What on
earth are you doing? I have other children who have been excluded
for extreme offences, and all you've done is something very minor."
What in one school passes for horseplay in another is a critical
incident. Unless we start to get some consistency in the tariff,
we will find that in some areas pupil referral units and alternative
provision are stuffed with people who were being teenagers but
got caught out on a bad day, and in others there are extremely
violent, aggressive, damaged young people who are in need of a
lot of support. I don't think there is an easy answer to what
is good behaviour. In Stoke, it is different from what it is in
Edinburgh.
Sue Cowley: I think that it is
fairly straightforward. If a kid tells me to F off or spits at
me, that is unacceptable behaviour. If they are talking during
my lesson because I have spent half an hour rambling on at them,
their behaviour is partly caused by my approaches to teaching
and learning. I need to take some responsibility for the low-level
stuff. So I won't have talking while I'm talking—it is unacceptable,
but it is to do with my skill as a teacher. It is those things
that Paul and I have said. You can train teachers to deal with
them, but things like telling me to F off—I'm sorry, that
is unacceptable, in all walks of life.[3]
I meet teachers who tell me that yesterday a kid in their class
told them to F off but nothing happened. There is a disjoint between
day to day in the classroom and what the managers do about it.
Katharine Birbalsingh: I fundamentally
disagree with Sue. What Sue has just said demonstrates precisely
what is wrong with our thinking in schools. Of course, you are
a dynamic teacher, you are interesting and you do everything the
right way, and you can keep your students entertained and interested
in working and so on. Sometimes there are ordinary teachers—in
fact, often there are ordinary teachers, simply because the extraordinary
is exceptional, by definition. Therefore, there are lots of teachers
who sometimes ramble on, but, because we have this way of seeing
things—"It is my fault for their misbehaving because
I rambled on," which is exactly what Sue said—it is
partly the teacher's fault, because they did not entertain the
child enough or teach the child well enough. Of course, there
is truth in that—if you have a very good teacher who does
not ramble, the children will not misbehave. However, we must
not then allow that to make us think that it is the teacher's
and not the child's fault when the child misbehaves. It is very
important that children are responsible for themselves. Even when
they are in the most boring of situations—it is Friday afternoon,
it is raining outside and they have the most boring teacher in
front of them—we should still have the highest expectations
of behaviour. In certain schools, that will be the case; in other
schools, the teacher will be held responsible for the bad behaviour,
and that is where we go wrong. We should not be holding the teacher
responsible. We should be holding the students responsible.
Sue Cowley: You said earlier that
teachers—
Chair: Sue, I am not having a dialogue.
Sue Cowley: Sorry.
Daisy Christodoulou: I would agree
with that. Pupils would be fine, they would be very well behaved
in my class, they would be my children, but I would hear stories
about them misbehaving in another class in school. I would sometimes
see them misbehaving in front of a supply teacher, and I would
ask them afterwards, "What were you doing? I know you can
behave. Why were you doing that?", and they would say, "Oh,
Miss, it wasn't my fault. The teacher couldn't control me."
I heard that from one or two pupils. It was a common refrain from
good pupils who could behave. I was gobsmacked when I first heard
it. I would sometimes ask, "What, if you were in a sweet
shop with a policeman standing next to you, would it be okay to
steal the sweets?" At some point, you have to say that it
is unacceptable for a pupil who is capable of behaving and who
knows how to do it to start misbehaving, because they think that
something is going on for too long.
Q231 Bill Esterson: I am not sure
whether that was quite the point that Sue was making.
To move on from that point, what works in terms
of managing behaviour both for the lower level stuff and the higher
level stuff?
Tom Trust: Can I come in on that
because I have not given my view on your original question? I
created a definition. I prepared a paper on disruptive pupils
a year ago for a policy committee, and wrote: "If a pupil's
behaviour causes the teacher to have to interrupt the flow of
a lesson so that the whole class ceases to be taught for a measurable
length of time or if that behaviour prevents just one or two pupils,
even the pupil himself, from benefiting from the teacher's input
for those pupils or that pupil, the lesson has been disrupted."
It is very simple. It takes in the low-level disruption, not
just the extreme cases. I also wrote: "If we wish to do service
to the 'Every Child Matters' principle—I don't know the
status of that particular principle with the change of Government—"the
needs of the disruptive child have to be met, but they are clearly
not best met in otherwise well-managed mainstream classes or else
the child would not behave in a disruptive way. The needs of
the other children in the class who also matter are obviously
not best met by the lessons being disrupted." I do not know
whether that is helpful, but you asked what we thought was meant
by disruption.
Q232 Bill Esterson: What about
the techniques that work in managing behaviour?
Paul Dix: The best schools have
a sign above the door regardless of what context they are working
in, which says, "This is how we do it here." When you
walk through the doors of that school, the expectations of behaviour
are different from those outside. The behaviours that you use
in the community or the behaviours that you use with your parents
might well work out there, but when you walk through that door,
that is how they do it there. The best schools have absolute
consistency. I don't care whether the system they use is behaviourist
or whether the system they use is extremely old-fashioned, the
critical difference is that people sign up to it and teachers
act with one voice and one message: "This is how we do it
here". You can find those beacons of hope in the communities
in most poverty, and you also find that the best independent schools
do exactly the same thing, such as, "This is the Harrow way,"
or whatever it might be. It is, "When you walk through the
door, this is how we do it here." The best teachers have
the same sign above their door. What works is consistency, not
trying to tackle all behaviour at once but deciding which behaviours
are to be taught. It is not relying on the parents to teach it,
but saying, "You need these behaviours to be a successful
learner in this school. We are not going to hide them. We are
going to teach you them. We will teach the staff how to do it."
I see that evidence every day in schools that are moving forward
in the hardest circumstances. It is not necessarily an issue
of resources. It is an issue of commitment and focus for the
school and of absolute consistency.
Sue Cowley: They are very high
expectations, clearly stated and clearly applied, with a system
to back them up when they are not being met. It is not the teacher's
fault the students misbehave, but equally the teacher has a responsibility
to set high expectations, to refuse to talk over students and
to ensure that students listen to them, but at the same to be
willing to build relationships, build trust and be flexible with
the most troubled. The stories you hear about some children turn
your blood to ice. We cannot just say to some of them, "Right,
do this—or else you're out!" That is not appropriate.
Flexibility at the same time is the hardest thing in teaching.
I have high standards and high expectations, but I am flexible
and I achieve those in the best and simplest way to build a relationship
with my children.
Q233 Bill Esterson: Can I pick
you up on that point? I sometimes hear in schools about children
being given a bit more leeway for the very reasons you are describing,
which is that something is going on in their lives.
Sue Cowley: I understand what
you are saying.
Q234 Bill Esterson: There is a
perception of different treatment for some children. What about
the other children who then say, "Hang on a minute, how come
he or she is allowed to get away with it?"
Sue Cowley: Can I clarify that?
Teachers ask me about that frequently. I am not saying that
the standard differs. It is an equal, consistent standard for
everybody, but I could say to one kid, "Sort your tie out",
but to another kid I may have to go across to them and whisper,
"Can you get your tie sorted out?" For some kids, it
is appropriate to say across the class, "Sort your ties out,"
but for other kids I need to achieve that standard but by using
different techniques—those are the techniques that we are
talking about: consistency, but flexibility in how I achieve the
consistent standards—because we are human and so are the
kids.
Daisy Christodoulou: I
agree with Paul that consistency is phenomenally important; if
different things are going on in different parts of the school
it is really difficult to maintain standards. I also think that
the larger the school, the harder it is to be consistent—it
is not impossible, but it can be more difficult.
Katharine Birbalsingh: These are
the questions that one must ask of the senior team—how do
you get consistency across the school? How do you ensure that
staff are all doing similar things and are having similar expectations
in their classrooms? That is rarely asked of senior teams, so
one must hold them to account to ensure that there is consistency
across the school. One must not be attacking each teacher and
saying, "Look, you haven't done it in your classroom."
If they have not done it, it is because it is not coming from
above. You have to hold the senior team to account for that consistency,
because consistency is everything—if you do not have it,
you do not have anything.
Q235 Neil Carmichael: I will ask
a few questions about curriculum and teaching methods, but before
I do so, I want to ask Katharine a question. You have put great
emphasis on keeping the leadership and management of the school
accountable. I was impressed by that, but who is going to do it?
Can governors do it? Is governance the right sort of structure?
Who else would it be? If it were to be governors, how would you
strengthen it?
Katharine Birbalsingh: No, it
cannot be governors. I suppose I am thinking of an equivalent
to Ofsted—of some sorts of inspectors popping in every now
and again and talking things through. That does not mean that
they need to come in wielding an axe, but they need to ask the
right questions. They need to ask questions of the senior team
and then ask the same ones of staff to see whether they tally
up. If they do, that is fine—you know that there is consistency.
They would be looking to see whether there is consistency in the
systems and whether there are systems, both to support the teacher
when the behaviour happens and to create an environment in which
children can learn. That is what they should have as their focus
and they need to be asking questions of everyone to see whether
consistency is there.
Q236 Neil Carmichael: So you are
looking for a pretty rigorous and persistent inspection regime.
Katharine Birbalsingh: That is
the word—persistent. How are they persistent? How are they
relentless? Senior teams must be relentless and the teachers must
be relentless with their love of learning in order to empower
everyone in the school to move that school forward. Those inspectors—or
whoever it is—would come in and ask about that. They need
to be looking for relentlessness, persistence and consistency—and
they rarely are. That in-house variation is something that all
schools struggle with. That should be what everyone is looking
at, and they are not—they are looking at things such as
"community cohesion" and nonsense.
Q237 Neil Carmichael: Those matters
will be dealt with, but I have got your point. I am not entirely
sure that an inspection regime is the right instrument, but we
will work on that. On curriculum teaching methods, we need to
tease out an answer on mixed-ability classrooms. May we have a
one-liner from each of you about the wisdom of having those, in
connection with discipline?
Tom Trust: I have always opposed
the notion of mixed-ability teaching, which is very much more
difficult than teaching a streamed class. It is very much a matter
of—almost—belief or faith, but I do not go with it
at all.
Daisy Christodoulou: Perhaps for
certain subjects, but on balance, no.
Paul Dix: When you have high quality
teachers, mixed-ability teaching raises achievement and results—done
it, seen it, proved it. You can look at the evidence and see that
when you have poor quality teaching, setting and streaming make
it easier to cope with behaviour. It is about the quality of your
teaching staff. Good teachers will tell you that they love and
enjoy mixed-ability teaching and that it raises achievement; teachers
who are not quite as skilled will say that having streams is easier.
Sue Cowley: Human beings are of
mixed ability. I am with Paul—it is about the skill of the
teacher. It is about the joy of differentiating—of having
the most able pull up the weaker ones. It is the model that I
would absolutely go with—not always, not in every situation,
but most of the time.
Katharine Birbalsingh: In any
institution, you have a few, who are extraordinary, at the top;
a few, who are struggling, at the bottom; and most people, who
are ordinary, in between. The few who are extraordinary, who are
at the top, might be able to cope with mixed-ability classes,
but you cannot have a system that relies on everyone being extraordinary,
because it will fail. If most people are ordinary, and those are
most of your teachers, you must have a system that will work for
them. Therefore, mixed-ability cannot work. I understand that
in PE, drama and art—those kind of subjects—mixed-ability
is much better for them and they prefer that, but for academic
subjects mixed-ability is an absolute no.
Neil Carmichael: Mixed views there about
mixed-ability.
Chair: I do not know whether that reflects
their abilities or not.
Q238 Neil Carmichael: I'm not
going to go into that, but—interesting stuff. The next question
that we should be looking at, and you have all touched on this,
is the curriculum—the management of it and what it is. First,
I want to know how you think the curriculum can be used to influence
behaviour, and then there is the question of managing the curriculum.
There are two distinct issues, and I would like you all to have
a crack at them.
Tom Trust: Starting with me, again?
Chair: No, we will start with Katharine,
because that is only fair.
Katharine Birbalsingh: Okay. I
was hoping that they would answer, because I wasn't quite sure
about your distinction.
Neil Carmichael: The curriculum is a
curriculum: first, there is what is on it, which is what we expect
children to learn about; and secondly, there is how we effectively
manage the delivery of the curriculum, if you like. They are two
different questions, which both need to be addressed.
Chair: Start with
how important you think it is to tailor the curriculum to the
needs of the pupils rather than to the results set.
Katharine Birbalsingh: Again,
this is one of those complicated questions. Clearly, if you teach
children things that they are interested in, they are more likely
to behave. But do we then abandon Shakespeare, because they are
not interested in Shakespeare?
Q239 Neil Carmichael: How do you
know?
Sue Cowley: They are.
Katharine Birbalsingh: They are
when you do things to get them into it. For instance, the argument
is often made that black pupils will be more interested in black
writers than in white writers. There is some truth in that—they
will be. However, does that mean you only teach them black writing
and never teach them any white writing? I don't think so. There
needs to be some kind of balance. Similarly, when you teach history,
the argument is made that black pupils will be more interested
in black history than in other types of history, and there is
some truth in that. Does that mean you only teach them black history
and do not teach them any other type of history? No, I don't think
so. You have to find a balance, which is difficult. Being quite
traditionalist, I like the move towards more traditional teaching
of history and English. Having said that, there will be an impact
on behaviour, because there is very much a sense in some communities
that people want subjects that are taught in a certain way to
be made relevant to them as such.
Sue Cowley: There are two aspects
to behaviour when it comes to the curriculum. One side of it is
inspiring children to want to learn and to be engaged, which is
part of the deal that you have with them as a teacher. Some of
my lessons start: "You will be engaged. We will be doing
this crime scene. Somebody's been murdered. We're going to work
back through the story of 'Romeo and Juliet' from the end, where
all the murders happen." But the bargain is that, in return
for those inspirational and engaging lessons, we are going to
read and analyse this section of the text, because, equally, children
love difficult technical terms and analysis. They adore Shakespeare
when it is taught in a creative way and when it is relevant to
them, but also when you say to them that the language is part
of the joy of it. There does not have to be this disjoint between
the traditional curriculum and the creative curriculum. It is
not like that. You need a mixture of the two, with the skilful
teacher in the middle managing behaviour by engaging with her
pupils and knowing what's going to turn them on, for want of a
better term. She has that as a bargain with them: "You need
to do this bit to access this bit, therefore you must behave."
Chair: I am not going to allow anyone
else to come in on that, as we have a lot to get through. I am
sorry, Paul.
Q240 Craig Whittaker: I want to
ask Tom about something you said earlier. You used the example
of a school where a head teacher came in and put 13 teachers on
capability assessments, which demoralised them. I come from a
background—before coming to this place—where a capability
assessment was an incredibly positive thing in analysing people's
development and training needs. Are you saying that there may
be a reluctance out there for teacher training and development
from the teachers themselves, because that's what I picked up?
Tom Trust: No. By the time you
put a teacher on capability, there will already be issues about
performance. Presumably they are there because they have had appraisals
that raised questions about their performance. I know the standard
letters that heads have to send out during the capability procedure
always include rather pat phrases such as "This is a supportive
thing." It isn't supportive. If a teacher is put under capability,
they are at risk of losing their job. That doesn't cheer up many
people.
Q241 Craig Whittaker: I do not
agree with you, because my experience is totally different—it
can be an incredibly positive thing. That brings me nicely on
to teacher training. David Moore, who was here some weeks ago,
told us that Marks and Spencer—I am a retailer by trade—spends
more time training its staff to deal with angry customers than
teachers get in behaviour and assessment training. We have already
established that there is a greater need for that. What are your
views on the Secretary of State's proposals to bring ex-forces
personnel into the teaching work force?
Paul Dix: What schools need are
the ambition, high expectations and respect that people from the
armed forces bring. But I know from experience a huge and hefty
ex-special forces person who joined a school. I saw him wobbling
in the staff room at lunchtime and he said to me, "How do
you get these kids to behave?" Let's train them, because
they could be a huge asset, but let's train them well and put
them into primary schools. Primary schools need men teaching boys
to read, and if boys can read, the behaviour problems in secondary
schools start to go away. We must have boys reading before they
go to secondary school, and then you will see behaviour start
to improve. When I go to modern foreign languages departments
in schools, there are often behaviour issues. Why? Because the
children do not understand English well enough, and we are suddenly
asking them to learn another language, so they are voting with
their feet. Teach children to read and get men in primary schools
so that reading is not just cool—it is what happens. It
is what men do. Get them leaving primary schools with the ability
to read, and then you will see people who are able to access the
most boring—or creative—lessons in secondary education.
It is absolutely critical. Sorry, I bent the question round, but
my experience brings me to that.
Q242 Craig Whittaker: So you are
saying it's a good thing?
Paul Dix: If they are trained
appropriately in managing behaviour, yes. Teach for America works
phenomenally well, so that model makes sense. It would be intelligent
to bring that over, but let's have them in primary schools, because
we need men in primary schools.
Tom Trust: In the Department for
Education business plan, it says that you want to create "new
programmes to attract the best to the profession"—I
have no argument with that—"including former members
of the armed forces". Why single out former members of the
armed forces? Why not former Members of Parliament?
Chair: Lack of discipline. We are an
unruly lot.
Tom Trust: I don't know why that
was specified.
Sue Cowley: We need to be careful
that we don't look at somebody in the armed forces and think,
"Well, they can discipline," because discipline in a
school by its very nature is a different kettle of fish, and it
would require training. You cannot court-martial a kid. The idea
that you get to the end of the line—that's it, you're out—
is not how it works in schools. The children have to go somewhere.
Q243 Craig Whittaker: So is it
a good or a bad thing?
Sue Cowley: It's fine, as long
as they are trained and they understand what it is about.
Katharine Birbalsingh: When I
was told on the phone about the Army, I laughed. If it is the
case that in most of our schools the behaviour is very good, why
are we thinking about putting the Army in our classrooms? It's
a good question.
Paul Dix: They would be in disadvantaged
schools. In America, they target the communities most in need,
where they do not have the quality of staff. They put the male
role models in there and it works. It is proven. It works.
Q244 Craig Whittaker: Okay. Let
me turn it on its head. Do schools use SEN to hide their own failings?
Sue Cowley: It's very hard to
get a kid statemented. There is a tendency, perhaps more these
days, to say, "Does this child have SEN?" But the statementing
process, to have somebody with a statement and extra support,
is a very long and complex process. Statistically, I don't know.
Are there more children these days with special needs, or is it
that we identifying them more? I don't know.
Katharine Birbalsingh: I always
talk about this excuse culture that exists, which has become part
of the norm, so there is ADHD, SEBD, anger management and so on.
It is through no one's fault, because we've looked at why this
child is misbehaving, and then see what kind of support we can
bring in for him, which isn't a bad thing—that's a good
thing to do. But then it has become so commonplace that teachers
tend to think, "Well, this one has behavioural problems in
this way, that one's got ADHD, this one's got this, and this one's
got that." Everyone has some kind of label, and no one is
responsible for themselves in looking after their behaviour, because,
"Well, it's not my fault, I've got ADHD. It's not my fault,
I've got anger management." So it's an excuse culture. Although
I think schools probably use SEN officially and hide behind it,
it is less obvious or tactical in what you're saying. It's just
more of a culture of expecting less of students because we think
they've got this or that label. We're always labelling everyone,
as opposed to just expecting high standards of behaviour from
them.
Q245 Chair: Does anyone take a
different view?
Paul Dix: We need to differentiate
between those children who walk the line—on some days they're
having a tricky day, and other days not—and some very damaged
children with severe mental health issues, with whom we should
be extremely concerned, and who have huge additional needs. I
think schools don't necessarily hide behind it, but they've played
a game. Extra funding comes with it, so you're tempted into identifying
every single possible need. I think there's a case for differentiating
those children who are damaged and most at need, and who have
medical diagnosis, and the children who, in a different situation,
in another week or year, or when with a different teacher, could
perform differently. Schools play the game that is laid out for
them, and we've got to where we've got to because they have been
doing exactly that.
Chair: I'm afraid that I will have to
cut both you and the panel off on that and come to Tessa.
Q246 Tessa Munt: I would like
to pick up on something. I can't remember who said this, but one
of you said we shouldn't be relying on parents to teach behaviour.
I just want to ask you questions about the fact that we've concentrated
on consistency. If you've got one model in schools, where you
have consistent standards that you have been set by the school,
and then everything falls apart when that child leaves school
and goes back to the community or home, how much emphasis should
be put on work with parents and carers to deal with young people
with behavioural difficulties?
Sue Cowley: I'm doing a lot with
early years at the moment, and one of the things that you really
notice is that by the age of three, a child can be so damaged,
effectively, by lack of boundaries outside school, that right
from the start, you are playing catch-up. Absolutely, if you can
get things right before a child is three, when they start the
educational process, it'd make a huge difference.
Q247 Tessa Munt: Okay, but how do you
do that? You've picked a child up at three, and I accept that
absolutely. What do we do?
Sue Cowley: I think it's great
to have the emphasis on early years, that more two-year-olds are
being funded to have more time in an environment where people
are skilled at handling them, and that more workshops are set
up for parents. There is patchy provision for parents, but I don't
think there's consistent provision around the country where they
have access to the kind of training we're talking about that is
given to teachers. I've done it for parents as well, so there
is that.
Daisy Christodoulou: I worry slightly,
in that sometimes I think that these things might seem a bit intrusive.
I am a teacher, and not a parent. There are standards of behaviour
that you want in school and in class, but I don't want to tell
a parent how to do their job. I worry over that. I think it is
a sensitive issue.
Paul Dix: Where it works best,
you have key workers who work with that family and follow it,
and the family has a consistent connection with that key worker
throughout that child's period of need. Early intervention works
well, but we could go on for years and years blaming parents.
That's an easy thing to do, and I think it's very difficult to
solve those entrenched problems in families. Why don't we concentrate
our resources on where they're most effective, which is establishing
good order and behaviour in schools, and targeting some of those
families, but not pretending that we can suddenly have national
parenting teaching? Parents don't buy into it. You put on behaviour
management meetings and so on, but parents don't get their parenting
from training sessions; they get it from the telly, their neighbours,
tradition or culture. It is easy to divert responsibility on to
parents, but what we need to do is to set the standards in schools
first, and then work outwards, rather than try to change what
is coming in—that is the wrong way around, for me.
Tessa Munt: Can I go to Tom and then
to Katharine, because Tom was frowning?
Tom Trust: Early years is way
outside my experience because I am a secondary school teacher.
I was frowning because I remember having a discussion with a head
teacher about 30 years ago in which he told me that we shouldn't
be telling parents what to do. I disagreed with him in the sense
that if we don't set standards in school, and standards are not
being set at home, the child is lost. That was my view 30 years
ago. Schools are quite entitled to set standards of behaviour,
but I am thinking in terms of secondary schools, whereas your
interest is more in early years in this line of questioning.
Tessa Munt: I'm interested in the whole
lot.
Tom Trust: As a general rule,
and to state the obvious, the most difficult children generally
have the most difficult parents. Head teachers who are dealing
with very difficult children—perhaps where there is a question
of whether a child will be excluded—find themselves talking
to difficult and unco-operative parents.
Q248 Pat Glass: Moving on to the
Government's proposals on discipline and behaviour, a ministerial
statement has been issued that sets out new measures to tackle
behaviour. Ofsted is telling us that we don't need new measures
to tackle behaviour and that teachers know what they can do, that
restraint is perfectly legal, and that it is actually parents
and pupils who don't understand what powers teachers have. What
is your comment on that? Do we need new powers, or is it that
not enough people know what the powers currently are?
Paul Dix: If head teachers are
asking for additional powers because of their particular circumstances,
I think we should be prepared to give them to them. It would be
disproportionate to give powers of restraint to every school and
every schoolteacher. Perhaps we should be targeting the areas
where that is an issue. Compelling trouble-making parents to take
responsibility for their children is an intelligent idea, and
giving head teachers power is absolutely what they want and need.
We have already talked about what head teachers are crying out
for, and that is the training and the tools to do the job properly.
Q249 Pat Glass: So it is the training
rather than the additional powers.
Paul Dix: If head teachers want
these new measures and they are asking for them, we should of
course give them to them. But I think that teachers would say
that what they want is joined-up management and decent training.
Tom Trust: I wouldn't argue with
the need for some extra powers, but what teachers need more is
reassurance about what they can do, because they are a beleaguered
profession. A particular point that worries me is the idea of
repealing the legislation that requires schools to give parents
24 hours' written notice of detentions, although I know that that
is qualified. Having taught in a rural areas, I know that there
are implications for such places. It was all right when I was
at school in London because I could be kept in just like that
and get a later bus. On being able to restrain pupils, training
is necessary where restraint is necessary. I notice that it refers
to not letting children leave the classroom. Unions have been
advising for years that you shouldn't stand in a pupil's way if
they try to leave. I have always ignored that as a teacher. I
have always taken the view that a child can only leave my classroom
if they walk over me. I have survived to retire. I have always
felt that it sends the wrong message to children if you let them
do what they want, quite honestly.
Daisy Christodoulou: Yes, I agree
with that. With a lot of the rules, it comes down to the message
that they send, as opposed to whether they are enforced or not.
For example, on whether you can search kids' bags, if I didn't
know a pupil's name, I would ask them to give me their planner.
If they refused, there was deadlock. The issue of this law came
up on 7 July and I discussed it with my class. It's not particularly
that I want to search a pupil's bag, but if there is a law and
the school has the power to do so, it sends a message. That's
what I like about it. That message does get through to kids, and
it makes them think.
Chair: Thank you all very much indeed
for your evidence this morning. It's been tremendous, enjoyable
and informative.
1 See Ev ?? Back
2
Note by witness: I've been told by teachers on several
occasions that their school has either excluded certain pupils
during an inspection, encouraged them to stay off school, or organised
work experience to coincide with an inspection. However, I would
not wish to present this as something for which I have direct
written evidence or research. This is anecdotal, but I think most
teachers would accept that it still goes on. Back
3
See Ev ?? Back
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